By: Constance T. Nopel

I spotted her pigtails from across the parking lot. Wide, blue eyes with hair ribbons to match. She was clever, this one. A drug dealer of the sweetest kind, openly peddling her overpriced goods to the withdrawn addicts. Her neatly stacked boxes in her red wagon guarded by a mere stuffed animal flaunted the easy access to euphoria—that is, if you could pay the price. I cautiously approached her, noting each badge expertly sewn to her green sash:

A Social Butterfly badge. A DIY Jewelry badge. An Ice Dream Party badge.

Clearly, this girl was highly trained.

I neared close enough for her to skip in my direction. I looked over her stash: Samoas, Tagalongs, Thin Mints: the motherload. She smiled prettily up at me.

“My name is Susie, and this is Mr. Bear-ee. Would you like to buy a box of Girl Scout cookies?”

That was all the proof I needed. Whipping out a pair of handcuffs, I pinned little Susie to the asphalt.

Perhaps you think it strange that I restrained a child against the ground. Perhaps you find it even stranger that I immediately after restrained Mr. Bear-ee in an even smaller pair of handcuffs. But I doubt you have any surprise at how the masses of passerby pilfered her drug-like merchandise as soon as Susie was incapacitated.

You see, I am a recovering cookie addict. My dependency sickened even that of the Cookie Monster himself. I started experimenting– a Toffee-Tastic here, a Do-Si-Do there. But before long, one box became ten. Ten became fifty. And fifty became my bedridden, obese body hooked up to a pure caramel IV, framed by crushed cardboard boxes and stale cookie crumbs.

I speak from experience: Little Susie was not a normal girl. Little Susie was a Girl Scout. I had been tracking little Susie for weeks, after hearing large reports of mothers cheating on their diets, coworkers mildly annoyed by fathers bringing order sheets into work, and desperate college students pestering anyone with a little sister.

You may think these girls are normal. But none —none— of these girls are normal. And I will devote my life to bringing down this cookie cartel—no matter what the troop mothers have to say about it.